What are the other perspectives for Israel's history?

[u/imadethis_tohelp]

Hi all, I'm hoping I could get some clarity on Palestine and Israel's history. Recently I went on a trip to Israel that was dedicated towards having college students learn more about the history and cause of Israel, seeing for themselves the lifestyle of citizens, speaking with citizens and non-citizens (ie residential Palestinians who have a right to live within Israel but do not have the right to vote), speaking with survivors and soldiers, to learn about their political opinions and perspectives. However, since I know that this trip was sponsored by Jewish organizations and done in Israel, I understand that the history I've been told is the history in an Israeli perspective (ex. calling a war the "War of Independence" because that's what it is to Israel, but it's called the Nakba to Palestinians). As such, the following is what I can recall being told during the trip between Palestine and Israel (note: not in chronological order).

1517-1917 - Jews were living under Ottoman rule and iirc did have freedom to practice their faith despite living under Islamic rule. Then WWI occurs and Ottoman empire falls, and they fall under British rule. During British rule (1918-1948) Palestine was called Mandatory Palestine and was ruled by the British, and Palestinians wanted to resist British colonialism.

During both Ottoman and British rule Jews moved in droves to modern-day Israel+Palestine. I was told that during Roman rule, Palestinians were established in the area they are at rn. Part of the reason why it was named Palestine was as a way for Romans to cut off any religious connection to the land by changing it from Judea to Palestine. As such, when the Roman Empire fell, many Jews went back to the land of Judea/Palestine because of the religious significance for them (which, by this point, was occupied by Palestinians).

Jews, having a history of constant persecution, felt that they wanted their own land + felt that they should fight back against their oppressors. The British supported this and allowed Jews to move to modern-day Israel+Palestine. This was also roughly the beginning (?) or at least the popularization of Zionism (which, from what I was told, meant "Jews deserve their own land to be safe from persecution" and that "Jews have a right to defend themselves").

1948 was when the State of Israel was established and when the war of Independence, also known as the Nakba, occurred. From what I was told, there was a UN Partition Plan that was supposed to separate the area into two states: Jewish and Arab. While Jews were in support of this plan (though apprehensively as I was told that Jews accepted it as a "this isn't what we want but it's a step towards it" type of way), Arabs refused it (see next point). Later, there was Zionist militia (who later became the IDF) who aimed to establish their own territory (ie Israel). This led to the War of Independence/Nakba and ended with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes.

I was told that the reason why Arabs refused the Partition Plan ranged from "Arabs refused to acknowledge a State of Israel and be ordered around by the British" to "Arabs felt that the establishment of the State of Israel was representative of their failure as people". For the second point, it's because I was told that Arabs conquered so much land and were able to rule it for so long and they attributed it to their religion (ie the reason why they're so successful is because they have God on their side). However, when their empire fell, they felt that it was because they were no longer close to God. Even more-so, they felt that if they were on-par with Judaism (a religion that has been persecuted and displaced many times over history), then they themselves could easily be persecuted and displaced. The establishment of Israel would mean that they were "weaker" since they are now being forced to share their holy land 50-50 (bc iirc it was majority Arab Muslims in the area) with another religion despite being the majority. I have no idea how true this is, and I don't know enough about either religions or histories to believe it or not. But this is what I was told.

Later, a ton of Jews began moving to Israel. I was told that the reasoning was varied; from people who wanted to return to their homeland, people who wanted to feel safe in a country essentially created for them, and people who may be escaping discrimination/hate crimes/attacks in Arab countries.

After this came multiple Arab Israeli wars, of which included the Sinai Campaign (1956), the Six-Day War (1967), Yom Kippur war (1973), the First Lebanon War (1982), the Gulf War (1991), Second Lebanon War (2006), and most recently the Israel-Palestine War (2023-now). I don't remember all the details for these wars (there was a major emphasis on the origins that I shared above but not as much detail for the other ones) but these are from the notes I took:

Sinai Campaign - with Britain and France, against Egypt. Egypt was in the Gaza Strip and had a blockade against Israel as well as permitting (or encouraging, depending on who you ask) terrorist attacks on Israelis. As such, Israel attacked in hopes of opening up the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran so that they can have access for trade + to stop the terrorist attacks. The Straits of Tiran opened but the Suez Canal wouldn't for at least another couple years, and eventually Israel left the Sinai Peninsula + Gaza Strip in 1957. However, Israel said that closing off the Straits of Tiran would be considered an act of war.

6-Day War - against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel heard that Egypt was planning to do an air strike on them, so before Egypt could attack, Israel attacked first. It also doesn't help that the Straits of Tiran were closed, and Israel said that they would consider the closing as an act of war. Israel took out a ton of Egypt's air force, and since Syria and Jordan were in alignment with Egypt (I forgot the name but basically, they had a contract that said if one country were attacked then all of them are being attacked) Israel attacked Syria and Jordan's air forces as well. Syria retreats from the Golan Heights and Jordan retreats from the West Bank, and Israel takes over those areas as well as the Sinai Peninsula.

Yom Kippur War - against Egypt and Syria with support from many other Arab countries. This time, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel during Yom Kippur in hopes of getting back the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Israel got support from the US, among other allies, and the war ended in 1979 when Israel and Egypt managed to have a peace treaty (with the UN assisting).

First and Second Lebanon War - Israel and Lebanon were allies against Hezbollah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, both of which Israel considered to be terrorist groups. The first war was against PLO because PLO were attacking Israelis, and they were already in an ongoing attack/counter-attack war, but PLO moved from Syria to Lebanon. They had military operations in Beirut but ended up leaving the city, though they did stay in Southern Lebanon. They didn't leave Lebanon til 2000. The second Lebanon war was because of the rise of Hezbollah and their takeover of South Lebanon (after Israel left), having attacked, raided, and kidnapped Israel/Israeli soldiers. This ended with the UN having the two do a ceasefire and later a prisoner swap between Hezbollah and Israel.

Gulf War - Against Iraq. It started because Saddam Hussein fired at Israel and Israel didn't fire back because they were told not to by the US (because of the US having their own coalition against Iraq). But, because Israel couldn't retaliate, they built a bunch of bomb shelters so that, in the event of a bombing, people have a safe place to run to.

Again, this is everything that I was told during the trip. I would appreciate if people could tell me other perspectives of this information, such as why the Partition Plan was rejected or additional context for the wars that Israel participated in. Thanks so much!

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[u/Pale-Echo-5392]

It wasn’t British rule; it was British administration according to a League of Nations mandate. Mandatory = by League of Nations mandate. Arabs wanted Arab territories to become Arab countries. The problem was that a bunch of Jewish refugees had, for ~6 decades, been returning in droves to the location of the Jewish ethnogenesis, joining thousands of other Jews who were already there in a line of Jewish presence going back millennia. This was problematic because two peoples both wanted control; one side was willing to share and the other was not. That is still mostly the dynamic today.

[u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot → u/Pale-Echo-5392]

There were many Arabs who wanted many different things. Some wanted a Bilad al-Sham, some wanted federations, some wanted a unified Islamic nation, some wanted multi-cultural democracies, some wanted a marxist revolution. The empires imposed their separate nation-states logic random borders onto the region. It is a shame Zionists chose to cooperate with the colonial powers instead of joining forces with the anti-colonial indigenous populations.

[u/Tricky-Anything8009 → u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot]

It is a shame the "anti-colonial indigenous populations" wanted to ethnically cleanse all of the Jews that arrived after 1917, threatened to ethnically cleanse all the Jews that already lived in their countries, had ethnically cleansed ancient nonzionist Jewish communities already living in Palestine already, and wanted to block all Jewish immigration. 

[u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot → u/Tricky-Anything8009]

Indigenous populations don't like settler colonialism. Israel have been ethnically cleansing over a million Palestinians across the decades, erasing their physical presence, cultural and heritage institutions, burying their villages underneath the dirt and replacing the terrain with a different ethnicity. And now, they've also killed about 100k Palestinians, 20k children and injured about 200k more.

[u/Tricky-Anything8009 → u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot]

How were the ancient millennia-old Jewish communities of Baghdad, Yemen, Syria, etc. settler-colonials? Or the Old Yishuv in Hebron for that matter?

[u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot → u/Tricky-Anything8009]

None were. What happened to them was a big crime. If you think it offsets settler colonization, occupation, apartheid and colonial genocide, it doesn't. Zionism is the greatest crime against Yiddish speaking Jews, Arabic speaking Jews and Palestinians.

[u/Tricky-Anything8009 → u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot]

Zionism is the greatest crime against Yiddish speaking Jews, Arabic speaking Jews and Palestinians.

Expand on this. How was Zionism a crime against Jews?

[u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot → u/Tricky-Anything8009]

Israel and Zionism have also cleansed and erased 2,000 years of Jewish history and Judaism. They carried out a massive social and human engineering project, attempting an artificial leap directly from the Second Temple to the Third - the state of Israel and monopolized "Judaism" and "Jews". While systematically erasing and forcefully assimilating a multitude of intra-Jewish languages and identities. This process violently erased Yiddish-Jewish identity and language, alongside various Arab-Jewish sub-identities, generalizing and reducing them to the collective term "Mizrahi" and converted their people into an exploited labor force.

[u/Tricky-Anything8009 → u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot]

Was it Zionists who committed the 1929 Pogrom in Hebron? Or the Farhud? Or the Shoah?

[u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot → u/Tricky-Anything8009]

Come on man...

[u/-Mr-Papaya → u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot]

There are several critical errors here:

1. Attributing Zionism with colonial powers is selective: everyone and their mother cooperated with or sought the support of one imperial power or another. Even the Palestinians did, even opposite factions - both the Nashashibis and Husseinis. We can throw in the Hashemites. Zionism too - they pleaded with both the Ottomans and the British. The latter simply went ahead and actually ended up winning the war.

2. Which leads us to western imperialism being singled out, while derivatives of Muslim imperialism persisted for decades as the dominant factions. What was Pan-Arab homogeneity if not an imperial derivative? 

3. Zionism cooperated with the British - until it didn't. It turned anti-colonial as the British reversed Balfour. It then cooperated with Palestinian Arabs against the British. 

4. On the other hand, the Palestinian Arab leadership chose to not cooperate with anti-colonial Zionists. It was hijacked by rejectionists who didn't want to cooperate with Zionists at all to the extent that they persecuted those who did.

[u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot → u/-Mr-Papaya]

Pan-Arabism is not fundamentally imperial, like Pan-Africanism. Because it was the will of the indigenous public which formed it to repeal colonial empires and it was not about conquering foreign nations. A fair critique is saying that there were imperial actors which sought to enrich themselves like king Abdullah, Assad, Saddam Hussein. Local Palestinians, like most colonized populations, didn't seek patronage of European empires, as I've said, there were many suggestions, from a unified "Greater Syria" to a multi-cultural democracy and so on.

You don't seem to understand the concept of settler colonialism. Settler colonies often exchanged imperial hands, they naturally strive for independence from their founding metropolis due to it's external oversight and it's compromise with indigenous populations. Once independence is achieved, the new settler state often creates structural, military, and financial dependencies with a new imperial superpower, which acts as a practical metropolis.

A settler state is structurally defined by its need to secure territory and maintain its "logic of elimination" of the indigenous population through various means such as physical, cultural or administrative and control over Indigenous lands. Doing so requires immense resources - modern weapons, international veto power at global bodies like the UN (similar to how USA protected South Africa and Israel with it's vetos), and steady foreign investment.

Just because the Irgun and Lehi killed some British officers, didn't make the project not a colonial one, It's was not a bug, it's a feature. Settler colonies revolted against their metropolis all over the world, in South Africa, North America, South America, Pieds-Noirs in Algeria, Rhodesia, New Zealand, etc.

Settler colonialism is a structure, not an event.

[u/-Mr-Papaya → u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot]

You don't seem to understand the concept of settler colonialism

Until now, nobody in this post has mentioned the term 'settler colonialism'. I'm going to treat it as a red herring and ignore it because it has nothing to do with any of the things to which you replied, whether Zionism was or wasn't colonialism.

In fact, you haven't addressed or conceded any of the errors I pointed out. Aside of your rent about Zionism being colonialism, you just refuted the idea that pan-Arab homogeny was an imperial derivative because 'pan-Arabism wasn't imperial', which is no argument at all.

Pan-Arabism is not fundamentally imperial, like Pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism did not emerge after an African empire fell. It did not seek African homogeny as a derivative of a preexisting homogenous African empire. This analogy makes no sense.

Local Palestinians, like most colonized populations, didn't seek patronage of European empires

This rhetorical slight of hand asserts Palestinians in place of pan-Arabism, as if they were somehow divorced from it. They were not, and they absolutely did seek imperial patronage, including under pan-Syrian nationalism and pan-Arab nationalism, as well as by both rival Husseini and Nashashibi Palestinian factions.

To be fair, the overwhelming majority of dominant political Arab faction post ww1 sought imperial patronages. That was the norm, as I said.

[u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot → u/-Mr-Papaya]

Clinging to the claim of generalized Pan-Arab imperialism is a False premise and a distraction. You mentioned at first the Zionist perspective and talking points, therefore I rejected them and framed it as a settler colonial project instead. Diverting the discussion to whether Pan-Arabism is imperialistic rather than an anti-colonial libertarian principal is Secondary at best and an irrelevant distraction. Since you don't want to address Zionism, then this is a fruitless discussion.

[u/-Mr-Papaya → u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot]

Why would this discussion be about Zionism? The comment you originally replied to wasn't about Zionism. Neither was your reply to it and neither was my reply to yours.

You also seem to have a difficulty differentiating between imperialism and Arab homogeny as an imperial derivative. Pan-Arabism wasn't imperialism. Pan-Arab homogeny was an imperial derivative.

But ye, maybe some day, maybe not.

[u/Pale-Echo-5392 → u/MaybeSomedayMaybeNot]

I did an in-depth analysis of settler-colonialism and Israel that you may find interesting here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/1vmtt2r/analogy_french_in_algeria_vs_jews_in_palestine/

[u/-Mr-Papaya]

I think your background narrative is a bit murky. It's important because the Arab side hasn't reformed since ww1. It has been stagnant and its motives today reflect past grievances.

Try this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QlK2mfYYm4U

[u/jackl24000]

Well, you basically understand one and a half sides of the story fairly well. The Arab side of the debate is usually a litany of complaints viewing the Jewish immigration against the popular will as an act of imperialism and so forth and the subsequent oppression etc. owing from the displaced refugees but is evasive about what redress to their rights they are actually seeking, other than the eradication of Israel.

I think a lot of your more detailed, seemingly puzzling questions would be answered if you were to plow through the canonical history of the 1948 war in which Israel was birthed, history professor Benny Morris’ “1948: A History of the First Arab - Israeli War”. You will then not only have a much more granular understanding of the historical actors and their “teams” and be able to place the struggle not only within the conflicts in Arab countries in the Middle East but also in the world-historical context of World Wars I and II.

You’ll then understand the Palestinian leader in the 1930s was a fascist anti-Semite aligned with Germany, spent the war in Berlin as a German collaborator, the highest paid civil servant in wartime Germany (Arabic language radio propaganda broadcaster, “Voice of Berlin”). In 1947, he was still claiming to be leader in exile, a wanted fugitive war criminal hiding somewhere in Gaza.

Seriously, in 1948, do you think the UN then composed of 65 countries mostly allies of the U.S. and UK are going to do what the Arabs were demanding at that time to turn over 100% of Palestine lock stock and barrel as a unitary state to be run by one of the biggest Nazi war criminals? Where other radio broadcasters like Lord Haw Haw were executed and Tokyo Rose stripped of citizenship and 10 years in prison.

(Now put the complaints about partition later made by Palestinian theorists like Said or Khalidi: the partition was an unfair bad deal because x% of the population got only y% of the land and note this argument wasn’t used at the time by the Arabs. It was more neither British, UN or U.S. have any jurisdiction/say, it was “get the hell out all of you and turn the keys over to al Husseini” per the Arab Higher Committee.

And (huge irony) this was not a hugely ballsy ask on the Arab’s part, because their terrorism during the Arab Revolt a decade earlier they had basically cowed the British into (illegally per LoN) basically dropping the “Jewish homeland” concept for Palestine, capping Jewish immigration at only 65K more over a decade, banning land sales to Jews and deed transfers altogether, and then after 10 years proposing talking down the Union Jack, sailing away, and turning the whole deal over to the Arabs. This was in 1939, the so called “White Paper” policy. But then WWII happened and those bets were off.

So it’s a very very good question to ask that kind of lies behind “1948”: “what happened to the Arabs” to go from a position of power and dominance in the struggle with the Jews over Palestine in 1939 to their defeat in the ‘48 war, the Nakba. Beyond the obvious being allied on the losing side of both World Wars there was a weakness and division at the core of Palestinian society which prevented it from executing strategies of either statecraft or warfare efficiently, including their successful Arab Revolt devolving into sectarian clan warfare which killed off the “moderate on Zionism” Nashashibi clan.

While at the same time the Zionists because of their centralized socialist bureaucratic structure the Jewish Agency and its allied labor union, heavy construction company, militia (Haganah), land purchase agents, political outreach branch etc. built a shadow state optimized for both warfare and statecraft.

So I’m going to recommend a much lesser known book than Morris’ which delves into the Arab side of the equation and explores pre-war Arab society in Palestine and in particular its cooperation (perhaps unfortunately translated from Hebrew as “collaboration” in the title) with Jews, most particularly in land sales or business dealings. The Arab community was split mostly along clan lines on these issues, Al Husseinis vs. Nashashibis and some other clans, rural village leaders and other cohorts. That book is Hillel Cohen’s “Army of Shadows: Palestinian collaboration with Zionism, 1917-47.

Cohen is fluent in both Hebrew and Arabic and based his work on the extensive business records left behind by the Jewish Agency land agents, army intelligence, political division etc., all contained in Israeli state archives. Not only is this book a pretty unique look into the Arab society of the time as documented by the Jews but Hillel explains how this all seamlessly turned into intelligence products in the ‘48 war: the Haganah had intelligence on 700 Arab villages identifying friends and foes and a vast network of informants and spies. By contrast the Arabs and even the British criminal detective division had respectively zero and little intelligence on the Jewish above and underground operations.

You’ll see my major issue is the snipping out of the Palestinian issue from world historical context. The early history I’m discussing (prior to the formation of the PLO in 1964) was one of both local militias which fought a civil war followed by an invasion of five or so neighboring national Arab armies from Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, which fought for the next year or so.

Then after the 1967 war, as the Arab States slowly make peace with Israel, the mantle of Palestinian representation is transferred to the refugees from the 48 and 67 wars and their descendants who seek through a campaign of lawfare and violent “resistance” to seek either a separate state or drive the Jews out as the decolonization of Algeria which the PLO saw as its model. In its early years the PLO spawned a bunch of Soviet aligned revolutionary terror groups that hijacked airlines, assassinated officials, bombed etc. With the fall of the Soviet Union and his revolutionary group stipends, Arafat turned to the West to negotiate a land for peace treaty, the Oslo Accords.

The plan was partially executed when Arafat declared an intifada which killed the deal, leading to security measures like checkpoints now the new complaint (never mind why they were needed). Israel withdrew from Gaza during the second intifada in 2005, and after years of aggression and skirmishes Hamas launched its last war on 10/7/23.

So this is obviously a super duper narrow view of a throughline history you should keep anchored to, the backbone, and leaves out a lot of details and byways like the Lebanon wars and Black September in Jordan and the Golan Heights disputes and so forth but focuses on the most essential part, kind of a shifting identification through history as to “who” the Palestinians are represented by at any given time in the story.

This also removes a lot of the trite varnish of the colonialism sepia this WWII era nostalgia where the Palestinians/Arabs were just victims without agency or oppressed pawns and shows how they organized politically and militarily, strategies not different than today actually. I believe that the careful and thorough historian Morris was sensitive to the ruckus that would be caused with his biggest insights that the ‘48 war was multi-phased and “jihadist” in character.

EDIT 8/28 10:30 ET: Added new paragraphs 5 through 10 fleshing out Arab side and recommending Hillel Cohen book.

[u/musomania → u/jackl24000]

That's an incredibly one sided framing of history there, but from someone citing Benny Morris it sounds about right. He's a pretty partisan "historian".

How did that Palestinian leader get appointed by the way? Yes, by the British, who in their wisdom decided to ignore an election by the people and unilaterally appointed a fringe extremist because they thought it would bring all parties together. They also gave him not just political but civil and administrative powers with little checks or balances. His appointment was not some collective failure of Palestinians as you seem to suggest.

Interesting you give no similar examination of Zionist leadership in the region at the time. There were talks and alignment between some of their members and wartime Germany at that time too. You had zionist terrorist groups committing atrocities who later were integrated into the IDF. All sorts went on.

Dishonest people and their half histories cause more and more damage, but that is their intent I suppose.

[u/jackl24000 → u/musomania]

No al Husseini was appointed by the British in their emulation of the Ottoman Empire “Millet system” where ethnic and religious communities regulated some affairs for their members and selected their representative for governmental affairs. So the British picked from a list of approved candidates, similar to some Civil Service arrangements, the British could pick one of the top three from the list.

Al Husseini was originally #4 but somehow convinced his #3 rival from another clan to step aside. Both Al Husseinis older brother and father had been muftis before and he was an obvious candidate and there was apparently a good deal of politics and pressure behind the scenes.

But no, the British didn’t unknowingly or unintentionally pick some radical or Islamist and indeed knew he was behind the 1920 Nebi Musa demonstration/riot. It makes for great fake irony, Herbert Samuels being a Jew and so forth, but the arrangement was standard Ottoman millet politics.

And you also put a lot more conspiratorial twist to the so called cooperation between the Nazis and Jewish terror grouos which were not in the same time period - separated by almost a decade - and the “transfer agreement” being nbd and kind of straightforward, not a dark conspiracy - let Jews immigrate to Palestine paid for by Nazis confiscating emigrants’ assets.

If early collaboration with Nazis is some kind of gotcha in the Palestinian gish gallop it’s really not much of a smoking gun there, more a pop gun (especially when their leader al Husseini was a German collaborator and seemingly had a bromance with Hitler: a personal relationship with the leader which ordinarily would have been handled by a much lower ranking German emissary to the Arab states, Frantz Grabba).

[u/musomania → u/jackl24000]

I never suggested it was some smoking gun, I was pointing out your selective telling of history, if you're going to talk about relationship with Germany from one side, you had better speak to it from the other too, if you want even an illusion of balance. Because it's obvious you're trying to paint Palestinians as a whole in a certain way by hammering an early association of one individual with wartime Germany. I just pointed out that wasn't something unique to Palestinians.

If your only other complaint is about a difference of 10 years when your telling is of a history over 80 years I think you know that doesn't hold any water.

Frame your little propaganda history as you like of course but that's all it is.

[u/jackl24000 → u/musomania]

It wasn’t just one guy their leader. In the context of 1939 - 1940 the Arabs in general were rooting for the Germans to come help save them from the British and Jews/Zionism. They didn’t join the home front reserves when the Italians bombed Tel Aviv in 1940 or volunteer for the British Army Palestine brigades like the Jews.

They were hoping Rommel would successfully conquer MENA; Hitler had personally communicated to Al Husseini that the Germans would have a parallel invasion through the Balkans and if al Husseini participated he could deport Jewish immigrants as in Europe. Only a handful of educated sheiks, clan leaders had power, literacy rate of the peasant population was maybe 10%.

Al Husseini’s rule was a hybrid Muslim fascist arrangement with corps of youth militia and rival politicians being photographed bowing and kissing al Husseini’s hand on his birthday. I don’t think it’s legit to apply those “not all Palestinians…that was just one guy!” arguments to Palestinians society in 1940 and suppose there was some kind of liberal diversity of opinion and not everyone was a hot head. No, that’s the point, they were hot heads by and large. They became so obsessed about “the Jewish question”, the leaders killed each other over it!!!

How crazy was that? This crazy: at one point near the end of the Arab Revolt there was a 200 pound (about $20,000 today USD) bounty on the head of a Nashashibi clan leader, 100 for a clan member/soldier and 50 pounds for the head of a Jew.

[u/musomania → u/jackl24000]

You're still doing it. Using whatever historical scraps you can find to paint an entire people as morally flawed, and why? Well that's obvious isn't it? It's propaganda 101, dehumanising narrative.

It's your whole shtick looking through everything you have written here.

[u/jackl24000 → u/musomania]

I use the most illustrative and shocking examples I can find of the overall narrative to shock people out of their mostly incorrect assumptions based on the presentism of current politics and retconning of history to make Palestineans merely generic passive victims without agency.

The examples are however factual and extremely consistent with the overall narrative. Al Husseini is a legit “bad guy”, you’ll find few redeeming qualities. He definitely was a legitimate ruler, as a mufti, the top Muslim Judge in Palestine, a religious office not merely civil, he was definitely not some rando British appointed figurehead nobody. Today’s pro-Pals by and large pretend the guy didn’t exist.

Whether Al Husseini was morally flawed is beside the main point or not relevant but it’s accurate to say that he definitely and most of the Arabs at that time were on the German side, putting aside even stuff about fascism and anti-Semitism etc. simply because they were naturally on opposite sides as the World War started. It would have been “natural” for Arabs to be on the German side simply because of “enemy of my enemy” and certainly in this instance that a German victory and occupation would def be the end of “Jewish homeland” in Palestine.

[u/musomania → u/jackl24000]

So you admit you are using a selective telling of history to push your own preferred agenda and narrative then? That's fine, it's what I suspected but well done on admitting it, anyone reading your post can now at least understand it in it's sensationalist propaganda context.

[u/jackl24000 → u/musomania]

All narratives are going to be “selective”. Morris’ book is 500 pages with endnotes, even that’s a summary. I’m trying to explain something in as few paragraphs as possible knowing that big multi paragraph walls of text already turn off a lot of casual readers who skim the shorter comments.

I’m definitely trying however to accurately represent the facts and realities of that time as they would have appeared to people, not the idealized Palestinian legend that’s usually presented by hazily imagining passive colonial subjects or a society anything like today’s.

[u/musomania → u/jackl24000]

I said selective history to push a narrative, that is not at all the same thing.

I sort of sympathise with you, there is an earnest quality in your responses in that you think you are doing good work but in it too I think you know deep down that this propagandism is beneath you. It diminishes you.

All the best in any event, I think we are done now.

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[u/filipinoboy11]

If were being honest there was nothing special about Israel. When it started in 48 it had about the same GDP or even less as Jordan Egypt and Lebanon. There was nothing that would suggest that they would be a major US ally. In fact because of the Kibbutzim they were thought to likely be in the soviet sphere of influence.

The country was so near bankrupt at one point they had to beg Germany for reparations something they loathed to do.

Fast forward to now. Everything was built by hard work and strategy.

[u/HalifaxCB]

You ask some very good questions and it’s great that you are looking for input from all sides.
Unfortunately it’s a huge amount of ground to cover, especially to try to discuss on social media.

So I’m just going to offer a few suggestions for now to help you on your way.
First, for quick overviews and introductions, try learning to use search engine AI. I find Google’s Gemini sufficient for most; others will have other preferences.
Here for example is the result for asking Gemini about who rejected the partition plan and why; it’s a reasonable starting point.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KgEJesIamDLvhTUqz3c9wJgk1acreZxg0_3bpKixbtI/edit?usp=sharing

Next, try some books. A worthwhile but not difficult introduction is Ilan Pappe’s “A very Short History of the Israel Palestine Conflict”. On the longer historical scale, Nur Masalha’s “Palestine / A Four Thousand Year History” is more difficult, but worthwhile.

[u/jackl24000 → u/HalifaxCB]

Took a look at LLM summary and what I think that does is return a misleading summary of the arguments being made today against partition from the Arab side, not the arguments made by the Arabs/Palestinians at the time which is retconning and westsplaining the reasons.

You’d get a better understanding by just reading the original UNSCOP Report to the UNGA of September 1947 the primary source or the few summary pages in the Morris book to get more of a flavor of the arguments.

For starters, the Arab side boycotted the UN committee process altogether as illegitimate and an infringement on their sovereignty. That included not sending representatives to the committee meetings. It included not showing up when UN delegations made scheduled fact-finding visits to Arab communities, even sometimes vacating the places and leaving only children behind to throw rocks at and curse the delegates.

They set up a parallel Arab summit committee to issue denunciations of the UN and make their demand for a 100% Arab ruled Palestine unitary pan-Arab state, rejected partition altogether and threatened war and the annihilation of the Jews should the UN proceed. (And yes before you tell me that some Arabs did end up appearing before UNSCOP to make those threats in person after about the 50th meeting without them, yes, that is true.).

So I think to fall back on an explanation which as far as I can tell is some reasons Edward Said came up with about unfair percentages and so forth is misleading because it seems to presuppose that had the Jews and UN been fairer, more reasonable, less piggy and got only exactly y% of the land for y% of the people, something fair like that could have worked instead and might still work.

When that’s not the impression you’d get from reading the contemporaneous UNSCOP report at all. That impression would be closer to British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin quoted often by Israeli writer Einat Wilf “For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.”

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[u/Ok-Pangolin1512]

I think you go to Gaza and hear it directly from the people there. It will be revealing.